Our Last Week Fly Fishing Yellowstone Country

Our last week fly fishing Yellowstone Country, we fished a couple of days on the Yellowstone River in the Park, Hebgen Lake, and the Madison River.

We left southwest Wyoming looking for dry fly action on the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park.

We arrived on July 19, four days after the opener on July 15. Our hope was to find Salmonflies, Golden Stones, and Green Drakes.

Finding a Green Drake Spinner provided some hope of rising fish.

Along with these recent Golden Stone nymph shucks.

But it wasn’t to be.

We didn’t find fishing like previous years:

• Yellowstone River – August 2017
• Yellowstone River – August 2019
• Yellowstone River – July 2020

Fly fishing the Yellowstone in late July was much different than we have experienced in past years. We were used to rising fish and adequate water flows and water temperatures. We found the opposite.

A few fish were rising half-way across the river.

It happened to be small fish like this 9 inch Yellowstone Cutthroat.

On the positive side, it’s good to see small fish because this means the fish will grow and I’ll be able to fish for them in future years.

Fish rose for about 10 minutes on our first day on the river, but that was it. After that, perhaps four other fish rose one time each!

But it’s still a magical place to fish.

And while waiting for the fish to rise, it’s a wonderful place for a coffee break standing in the water.

A stop at LeHardy’s Rapid rewarded us with a few of two fish immediately below us in the rapids.

And with water temperatures between 66 and 68 degrees, I’m sure this had an effect on the insects AND fishing.

Bottom line…we left the river a day earlier than planned.

After spending the night about 6 miles outside West Yellowstone in the mountains, we decided to wade Hebgen Lake to see if we could spot some gulpers feeding on Callibaetis mayflies.

Remember our theme of low water? I took this picture on July 4th…over two weeks before we returned to try our luck. It was lower then.

Here I am waiting for a fish to swim by, but very few did that day.

Callibaetis spinners were on the water and flying in mating swarms.

And the Tricos had begun hatching as well.

Needless to say, we fished until the wind came up and didn’t hook up on any.

Our last day was spent back at $3 Bridge.

The fire up by Cliff and Wade lakes had been contained. The firefighters were conducting back-burns to help control the fire. Much of the smoke had subsided.

But the fishing?

The river flows were back to 1550 cfs, much higher than the normal summer flows of 1100 cfs.

Between the high flows and compressed insect hatches because of the hot weather (I’m guessing), only a couple fish rose.

I landed a 9 inch Rainbow Trout and my wife caught this nice Brown Trout.

It’s not the best image, but it was the last trout of our 2021 fly fishing road trip.

If you’ve been fishing, I’m sure you have experienced low flows and high temperatures in your waters.

Let’s all hope the fish gods bring us a wet and snowy winter.

Click the link to read about all our fishing adventures from this year and before, see this Fly Fishing Road Trips link.

Enjoy…go fish!